su17-13841_txt_part2

Route/Strategy:
Is it really necessary to cheese the first fight? of course, the spider masterminds are very annoying and I have no interest in getting close to them. I will grab the megasphere in the next fight immediately so I just need to survive here with 1hp. A double linedef skip on the plasma rifle will start the fight and keep the entrance open so that I can leave and easily get the mastermind infighting. Time wise this is probably a bad idea and since it's right at the start and so it might just be better to run circles around the arena like intended.

BFG area I start with the hell knight side after getting the cyberdemons occupied with the revenants. Leave just enough cells to get out and refill. The mancubi won't have filled up the left area so I run by to clear a few of them out before I go up the stairs to get more infighting going. Then kill the remaining hell knights and cacodemons with cells/rockets and BFG to clean up the mancubi.

I didn't plan on cheesing the next fight, it's not necessary either, but when I found I could just start the fight and go back I figured I'd just use it. My other plan here was to just BFG the cyberdemons while keeping my distance to them and kill them immediately, followed up with BFG to clean up everything else since there's so many cells that infighting isn't important. But instead I just sit back and combine infighting with rockets first before I jump over and BFG the cyberdemons. Much easier to deal with the mancubi in the one tower too which is nice.

Another cacodemon horde coming up, with 4 cyberdemons it means a lot of them should be killed with infighting. I don't think my route here is very good, there might be better positions for the cyberdemons to get work done faster. I start by killing the arch-vile pairs in the towers while getting the hell knights/barons infighting with the cyberdemons before the cacodemons reach me. Afterwards I just want to sit in the corner by the cells to get all the cacodemons on top of the cyberdemons, but usually the cyberdemons will get too close so I need to circle around which makes a mess out of it. Getting the arachnotrons infighting with the cacodemons could also maybe be done well.

Hallway runthrough is easy enough, so many rockets and cells that you can go crazy with them here, just need to make sure there's enough cells for the 2 cyberdemons at the end.

Once up the elevator just kill the 2 arch-viles first and then the cyberdemon, imps are no problem. What I like to do here is to leave the soulsphere for the final fight, I should end up with 200/200 soon anyways so it's no issue to skip it.

Soulsphere room is simple, just take out the viles with rockets and BFG the hell knights/barons, there's another 600 cells in the room and plenty of rockets. It's possible to softlock here as there are 2 linedefs that can close the door, so if you cross one of them, open up the door and cross the other you are locked in.

I've got enough BFG to just throw it away and try to get as many cacodemons/lost souls as possible. Don't want to take too much risk with the cyberdemons because of random lost souls.

Next up is the cyberdemon arch-vile infighting, this part is dangerous if you wake up both cyberdemons, but with only 1 cyberdemon it's no problem. Then again it's a lot faster to just run past the viles, so that's what I'll do. Once past I fire a fire BFGs and run down the left side where I can fire a lot of rockets to weaken them. Then I can go to the back to the cells and even if there's a large group of viles left they won't all rush me making it quite easy. There's a chance some of them are infighting a cyberdemon, best to avoid killing the cyberdemons until all arch-viles are dead as you don't want to hit them with tracers and have them change target.

Once I start the fight in this room I want to leave immediately so I rush through to the next switches. I fire a BFG down the corridor so I can get double BFG tracers on the viles. Usually this works really well, but even if I take a couple of hits I just need to get out to the soulsphere in the previous room. From there I will just fire rockets and BFG till everything is dead. I like to go back inside and use rockets on the hell knights from the low ground, that way you'll probably get any wandering monster left alive to come to you at the same time.

Next I'll just BFG my way through to the baron/cyberdemon area. The barons can win against the cyberdemons, so I try to get the cyberdemons to do some rocket splash, but if it doesn't work it's not a problem to just kill all the barons myself and BFG the cyberdemons. More rockets down the hallway to clean up

Back to the BFG area where the next area is now open. One can just run around the linedef that closes the path behind you, so that's what I do and I'll be able to use all the rockets and cells that I've left there. It's also not too bad to sit in the imp area, probably get better infighting that way, but rocket splash might be worse.

Now for the big room with the 2 large platforms and yet another linedef skip, this time it's a north linedef which makes it quite difficult. I did manage to find what I believe to be a consistent setup eventually. Since it's north I need to run across the linedef with a speed only achieved by wallrunning unlike the 2 linedefs I skip at the start of this level. This gives me access to the previous section which leaves me with a lot of extra ammo. Not to mention a really really long hallway which I can just fire rockets down and be completely safe. I grab megasphere after the linedef as I usually won't be needing it later and don't want to take any risks at the start of the fight. Immediately I will go for the second switch to get more monsters into the fight for better infighting and rocket splash damage. Need to occasionally check on the other hallway so I don't get surprised. Once it's clear enough I'll go for the 3rd switch which will bring in some mancubi, I want to clear the entire room before activating the final switch since there will be quite a few arch-viles teleporting in.

There are 4 places the arch-viles will teleport in which is top right corner, left side and on top of the 2 platforms. Once I've pressed the switch I will deal with the bottom platform first where I will also grab the soulsphere if I need it. Then I will fire BFGs towards the top right and take out any arch-viles there. I don't want to stay for long because of projectiles coming from behind, so I'll repeat the process once which should take care of all the viles top right. Afterwards I fire rockets from the bottom platform towards the top one in hopes of taking out the majority of monsters there. Need to be careful about arch-viles which are infighting, there's a decent chance they will hit you immediately if a rocket lands while they are busy fighting. After a while the path is completely clear if I drop down on the right side and run across the gap up top to reach the top platform. The rockets should have done enough damage that a few BFGs will easily clear out the remaining monsters. The rest is easy as I've got so much room and everything is located in the same area, just need to be careful of the remaining arch-viles.

There's over 100 rockets and 600 cells outside the crusher section, but that becomes inaccesible if I cross a linedef which is close by the first switch located at the halfway point. So what I'll do is run through and clear everything out, but leave with 0 cells and 0 rockets if I can. Then go back and get ammo before I run back and activate the switch and then immediately run back to the start since I don't want to have monsters attacking me from behind or coming from 2 sides. There's also a single arch-vile in the first teleporter that I'd don't want resurrecting a lot of monsters. From there I just need to slowly clear everything in front of me and go back for ammo whenever I need it. I have a megasphere and a soulsphere available making it quite easy as long as I don't do anything dumb.

Then just run through some parts to get red key + 200% health and 200% armor from the soulsphere and mega armor I left behind before the final fight.

Now for the final fight I will start by doing a run around going left the moment monsters start to teleport in. After that I go straight for the leftmost teleport corner. I will use all 100 rockets and I really need to avoid taking damage unlike the other teleport areas as I will not actually use the teleporter the first time. Instead the moment I run out of rockets I will BFG my way through so that I can pick up the rockets closest to me as I won't get much of an opportunity to pick them up later when the room is filled up with monsters. I wait a bit on the left side by the cells to drag monsters away from the right side and then go for the rightmost teleport area. Again use all 100 rockets, use teleport, pick up rockets on the right side and wait by the cells on the right side before going for the leftmost teleporter while grabbing another megasphere on the way. Repeat the process once more, but this time I want to wait as long as possible before going for the right center teleport room. This is easily the most dangerous part of this run, as there will be a lot of arachnotrons and if you run into them they will deal a lot of damage. Then of course there are cyberdemons everywhere so you need to keep an eye on them for any random rockets.

Once I reach the teleport room it should be safe, just use whichever rockets I have left, teleport and stick by the cells. Again need to be very careful of random cyberdemon rockets, but there's so much distance between everything that you get a good overview. It takes a while before all the arachnotrons teleport, so if you try to run around too early there's a chance the path is completely blocked off by them. After a while you can easily just run circles around everything and get some rockets to clean up the remaining monsters.