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Hybrid Moments

Best beginning slaughter maps?

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So I've been trying my hand at some slaughter maps after watching so many different demos of them on Youtube. The thing is, I get my ass kicked on most of them.

I know there are strategies to each and every map, things like ammo conservation, monster infighting, etc., and I also know that slaughter maps are created to be difficult.

So far I've downloaded Sunder, SF2011, and SF2012. All are obscenely ridiculous on the difficulty scale IMO, but I really want to be able to beat them eventually.

My question: What slaughter maps, if any, could be considered "easiest" for getting into the slaughter realm? I'm stuck in a Doom skill plateau, and I really need to break out of it.

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I'd recommend the later maps of Hell Revealed to get you started, maybe some E3 maps from the Scythe series of wads as well, and Demonic Hordes from AV.

I'm going to throw 2fight by Eternal in there but it's a bit more difficult that the above mentions.

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Sunder and SFs are made by/for some of the best current players, that's definitely not what you should start with! :)

Have you played Hell Revealed, the first slaughter megawad? It's not that difficult by modern standards, with the exception of a few later maps. (24 and 26 are pretty brutal)

Kama Sutra would be a good choice too, it is loaded with powerups, which allow the weaker players to play aggressively.

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try some slaughtermaps from other pwads for example Map10 of Vanguard, it's a slaughter map but not too difficult

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Are you ok with playing on lower difficulties? That might help for many wads (aside from sf11/sf12/sunder where difficulties are kind of clumsily implemented, if at all)


map05, 10+ in Vanguard are very easy but still have some tasty slaughter gameplay.

Cybersky is also a good one.

Later maps in scythe 2 (on lower difficulty settings) could work.

maps 14, 16, 20, 26, 28 in Speed of Doom are great.

some of the 'classics' may fit the bill as well, HR, HR2, Kama Sutra, etc, though some of those can be a bit rough around the edges. Survive in Hell could work also, seeing as it's pretty much a HR tribute wad.

Deus Vult 2 on lower difficulties might also be fun.


Some other relatively recent wads that I didn't find overly tough:

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=17119
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/64314-rush-11-maps-demo/

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Holy Hell...... Joking aside Hedrox 2 map 02 is slaughterish but incredibly easy. The HR series is a good way to start along with kama sutra, XIII Cybersky, Speed of Doom. Jenesis whilst not very slaughtery has some hard maps in places as well. There's a load more but I'm struggling to think at the moment. EDIT: Okay, a lot of these were mentioned and some others I forgot about were mentioned.

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Ribbiks said:

Are you ok with playing on lower difficulties? That might help for many wads (aside from sf11/sf12/sunder where difficulties are kind of clumsily implemented, if at all)


map05, 10+ in Vanguard are very easy but still have some tasty slaughter gameplay.

Cybersky is also a good one.

Later maps in scythe 2 (on lower difficulty settings) could work.

maps 14, 16, 20, 26, 28 in Speed of Doom are great.

some of the 'classics' may fit the bill as well, HR, HR2, Kama Sutra, etc, though some of those can be a bit rough around the edges. Survive in Hell could work also, seeing as it's pretty much a HR tribute wad.

Deus Vult 2 on lower difficulties might also be fun.


Some other relatively recent wads that I didn't find overly tough:

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=17119
http://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/64314-rush-11-maps-demo/


I usually always go UV even after getting killed repeatedly, just because that is the standard.

I'll try all of these out, thanks for all the info so far everyone!

My ultimate goal is to be able to release demos that people would actually want to watch, UV-MAX being the category I'd like to go for.

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Plutonia's "Go 2 It" is the first slaughter-ish map I ever beat without saving, way back when I was still keyboarding in the mid-aughties. It gets you used to fighting lots of monsters at once while still being fairly easy.

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ArmouredBlood's New Gothic Movement #1 is a WAD that very much fits the contemporary definition of what a slaughter WAD is (apart from an outlier map or two), but I'd surmise that it's perhaps a bit more accessible than many others simply because he was quite generous with item placement in so many of the maps--so you can see what fullscale battles in this particular mapping idiom might be like, but with a larger than normal margin for error. That's on UV, mind....I'm afraid I'm not sure to what extent he implemented difficulty settings.

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Creaphis said:

Plutonia's "Go 2 It" is the first slaughter-ish map I ever beat without saving, way back when I was still keyboarding in the mid-aughties. It gets you used to fighting lots of monsters at once while still being fairly easy.


I actually thought that "Suburbs" from Doom II was the first slaughter-ish map, with the blue key beatdown. I got more used to fighting the enemies there. Also "The Courtyard" can be considered somewhat slaughter, if you let all the enemies out onto the courtyard itself; sometimes I do that.

Of course "Go 2 It" isn't bad either.

EDIT: Also, Ultimate Doom E4M2 and E4M3 have a sort of slaughter vibe to them (and maybe E4M8 as well).

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I really don't understand the popularity with slaughtermaps recently, even moreso the fact that they are popping up in non-slaughtermap wads as later maps.

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Avoozl said:

...even moreso the fact that they are popping up in non-slaughtermap wads as later maps.


This is a fair concern. This is often more of a change in style than an escalation in difficulty which can alienate either one half of your audience or the other. Then again, megawads like Alien Vendetta eventually spiral into slaughter have probably done a lot to make slaughtermaps more popular, since they force the uninitiated to give them a try at least.

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Creaphis said:

This is often more of a change in style than an escalation in difficulty which can alienate either one half of your audience or the other.

I honestly just find them dull, incredibly boring and even frustraiting, I find them a chore which quickly drains the fun out of the game, it's just overkill for me.

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Are you ok with playing on lower difficulties?


I'll side with that one. Playing on ITYTD worked well for me, even on maps without skill settings. Health/ammo balance is largely irrelevant at first, when you just get stomped, and eventually pull through without quite knowing what you did correctly. Getting used to the gameplay differences fighting hordes rather than small groups is much more critical. You also learn the layout of the maps, item and monster placement, which is helpful to tackle the higher difficulties later on.

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Hybrid Moments said:

My ultimate goal is to be able to release demos that people would actually want to watch, UV-MAX being the category I'd like to go for.

You don't necessarily have to record slaughter maps in order to achieve this. The best advice I can offer is pretty much learn the map you want to record on thoroughly, then record. I got recommended that recording FDA's would help so you can look back on them and study what you've done right and wrong and learn from them. Those things I need to start doing myself despite playing tonne's of wads.

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I prefer "Longday".
It has more monsters than can be displayed without sprite limiting.
It also has a decent design and a building with some decent architecture.
It it possible to win.

About 20 cyberdemons at start with more appearing later.
About 11 spider demons.
More of the other monsters than can be counted.
Start with BFG, can go get rocket launcher, more ammo than you will need.

Best tactic is to run over "invulnerable" and then join the cyberdemons on the pyramid, until you get a good infight going.
Second best tactic is to move in, take a shot, move out.
Third, run near groups to setup infighting whenever possible.
Otherwise run around the outside.
You learn that you cannot survive being in the middle. You must be on the outside, at a distance, with freedom to pick your targets.
At the start, do not fire until you escape the middle.

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wesleyjohnson said:

I prefer "Longday".



I have yet to find a computer that isn't ground to a halt by this monster.

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Eternal's remake of nuts? I could only play a small portion of it sadly. At least he was able to make it feel like you're trying to play nuts on an old age computer again. I would recommend Hanging Gardens by Skillsaw. I'm a sucker for his maps and remembered this one today.

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Works fine in GlBoom+ for me. There's some noticeable framerate drop if you stand at one edge of the playable area and look the other way, but that's about it.

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DBzone_v7c is good for slaughter, even though the wad is really meant for coop gameplay. Or you could try destination unknown - it wasn't that hard when I played it some years ago.

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I used "Longday" to develop the sprite limiting on DoomLegacy.
Without sprite limiting it is about 3 sec per frame.
Adjust the sprite limiting slider until you get playable frame rate.

I get about 4 frame per sec. when limiting to 512 sprites (based on poor memory).
The closest 512 get displayed, and the others compete for another 512 sprite display slots so they flicker.
Gets a little interesting when you are surrounded by a thousand dead monsters, and some cyberdemon in distance keeps throwing missiles (and he flickers).

Using a port without sprite limiting would not be recommended.
Another wad, "nuts", also has an excessive number of monsters but is not as interesting nor as playable. With "nuts" the player has no chance to kill much of the second room of monsters due to lack of ammo.

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