Game:

Doom II: Hell on Earth (1994)

Duration: 43:46

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23

Wad: Requiem
Skill: Ultra-Violence
Time: 41:49
Map: Map30
Name: Nevermore
Category: Pacifist

If you caught this live on Twitch, you'll know I was in shock when that final hit on the boss came through and the stats screen popped up. This has haunted me and nagged at me for long enough.
The description below is abridged from the full text file included with the demo on Doomworld (I overflowed YT description characters by over 3000, oops). You can read it there.

Recorded on July 10th, 2024

The original text file description is below.

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Description:

At some point in 2002, I did a few Max and -respawn runs for this map. Posted them up to the old Compet-N incoming FTP. I noticed Pacifist had not been submitted and said something in #nightmare about it. I think the majority in there dismissed it as impossible but a few entertained the idea as a possibility but would likely need a miracle.

I quietly obsessed over this. I picked at it here and there, coming back to it every now and then. For 20+ years I did this. I'd open it up, take a small look, see what I could come up with without really thinking outside of the box, then go back to something else. But this run never really left the back of my head.

Sometime around the middle of last year I started looking at the map. I sat down, tried to see what sort of things was possible. I knew you could skip the fencing in the boss room, one of the few things I did discover when poking at it over the years. But I looked at other avenues before exploring more in that direction.

I started editing the map to see what I could figure out. I turned off monster spawns and put enemies in the map in an attempt to explore the "stray shots" theory, which clearly was a dead end. I then remembered the Icon's head is a 3-tier wall with 1 pixel wide floors and put Viles in. A very precise timed double AV jump lets you to clear the very bottom part of the IoS. An AV jump boosts you 55 map units, so you need two spaced at a specific times to get at best 110 map units, with max step clearance being 24 map units, letting you climb 128 map units to get on that bottom part. Then you have to precariously balance yourself at the back of the boss. At that height, the enemies have a good chance of hitting the boss. Getting that scenario though is akin to winning the lottery, the only way I really got that to work was putting the Viles in myself and then removing the spawners.

After exhausting the ideas I had, I went back to the fence skip. I had the idea of seeing if Cacos could hit from behind. Then I heard the boss damage sound. I was on to something.

Then the new problem of keeping at least one Cacodemon alive for the entire duration. Realistically, that Baron in front of the boss will, in something like 95% of runs, be alive and a minor nuisance. He can be useful though, as I found out later. I kept working on this Cacodemon theory for a while, having my furthest attempt last around 25 minutes with 4 boss hits. He then decided to get killed because I allowed him to slip around to the front and hit the Baron for infighting. At that point in time, Caco death meant the attempt ended.

Then at some point I did another attempt and I decided to see if the Lost Soul can hit the boss. They can actually hit the boss! And with a higher consistency than a Cacodemon. The problem I realized is that, while the Cacodemon has a higher damage output (only needing between 5 - 11 hits), their bulk gets in the way and shrinks their targeting window of opportunity to an extraordinarily tiny spot and your own personal positioning needs to be pretty precise in response. With the Lost Soul, his smaller size and seemingly more aggressive tendencies gave me a bit more leverage in my own placement. Lost Soul needs to hit the boss more than double the times (between 14 and 23 hits). I was getting them in a much more consistent fashion. With the Caco, I remember going nearly 15 minutes at one point without landing a hit. That could simply all just be the nature of RNG and me getting unlucky.

With the Caco strategy, if it dies, you don't get another shot at that and have to start over. With the Lost Soul strat, if it gets killed, you wait for a Pain Elemental to die at the fence and you'll usually get a Lost Soul or two. Sometimes you'll get a random Soul spit through the fence, too.

Shortly after switching to the Lost Soul strategy, this finally happened.

A myriad of things can go wrong. Monsters not wanting to cooperate at the start, Elementals being in just the right spot to spawn more Souls than you can handle, random stray shots from above while you are herding sleeping Souls, being in the wrong spot at the wrong time to get Vile zapped, among other things.

There is absolutely ZERO health once you glide past the fence. Every single mistake you make, everything that can happen to go wrong, they will all slowly add up over time.

Thanks for watching/reading :)

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