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Zemniomega

Doom Strategies

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Hello. I'm Zemni. Being in the doom community for some time, I've picked up a lot of playing strategies from friends and family. Are there any strategies that would help me gain some sort of "Edge" while playing?

Maybe the "w-a-s-d" key layout isn't good enough?
Anyhow, Are there any suggestions that anyone can tell me?

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Everyone has their own preference in mouse/keyboard configuration, and what works best for some people, don't necessarily work well for others. I can tell you my configuration, so you can give it a try and see whether it works for you.

forward/back and strafe left/right: WSAD
fire: left mouse button
open: right mouse button
change weapon: mouse wheel up (prev) and down (next)
map: tab

extra's:
jump: middle mouse button
crouch: c
scores/stats: \

Obviously, mouse speed is important. I have always mouselook on, since it will otherwise make the player move forward and back in some ports (in vanilla doom, i use NOVERT.EXE to fix that).

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I would suggest strafe-running and wall-running if you're not already familiar with them. A search on the Doom Wiki should yield the appropriate instruction as to how to perform them.

Regarding multiplayer strategy, the silent BFG trick, and a general understanding of how the BFG rays work is very useful.

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Crossfire by strafing is great for saving ammo for those areas you know are going to be tougher.

And chaingun sniping (tapping fire as opposed to holding down the button) will conserve your bullets for long range kills, since all your shots will be focused instead of dispersing.

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Hm, I've never made much use of wallrunning or the silent BFG trick. Most Doomers who'd be interested in playing oldschool deathmatches most likely know of those tricks already. (All my pvp experience has been newschool.)

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As somebody who is crap at ammo conservation and never strafes, let alone uses any other fancy control setups, i've came to use the following over the years...

- Run away! lure a big horde of monsters into a previously cleared area and deal with them one by one. Plus a load of them filtering down a narrow hallway will lead to various infights

- You can usually chainsaw Cacodemons without fear of reprisal if you can isolate them, sometimes they'll get a shot in a point blank range but it's rare.

- You can also chainsaw Hellknights that have been given two SSG shots already and they die pretty quick, but that's more risky. If you're trying to save shells give them two SSG's then finish with the pistol or short chaingun bursts

- In large "arena" battles, Arachnotrons and Revenants are your friends, the former because they'll spray a load of plasma into the main body of the monsters between you and them, the latter because you can get a fireball chasing you then put some other poor idiot between you and it. Mancubus shots often go wide too

- Monsters will attack the creature that has done the most damage to them. If you come across a lot of varied monsters weave around but don't fire! pretty soon you'll have less targets to hit.

- Charge ambushing chaingunners if they are on the same level as you, you'll take a few hits but can blow them away with a point blank SSG, better than taking lots of hits from a distance. Alternatively if you have the chaingun selected give them short "taps" from a distance. If they are very distant let them start firing at you (thier shots spread out over a wide area), this makes them nice and stationary and illuminated and perfect for a rocket.

- Shotgunners and Chaingunners should normally be prioritised over Imps etc, even up to Cacos and Hellknights, as thier shots can be dodged more easily.

- Ammo is there to be used. Don't be afraid to bring out the big guns for "weaker" monsters if it's likely to be efficient, for instance BFGing a room of imps or rocketing a cluster of hitscanners on a ledge...

- ...and sometimes "weak" weapons can be used on "strong" monsters. You can SSG a spider mastermind from a surprising distance away and because of it's huge size every pellet will still hit it, for almost as much damage as a rocket!. This also works on Cybs to a lesser degree... and the single barrel can cause a lot of damage to arachnotrons from afar, just make sure you have cover!

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If you have more health than 80 %, don't pick up medikits, which'll give 25 %, because you can't get every percent of health that the medikit would give to you. Same thing is with ammo too.

And, if there's a megasphere and some health and armor bonuses, don't pickup everything, just the megasphere.

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To keep ammos for tougher battles, I use often the fist when I have the berserk pack. You can kill most of the monsters with this, with training.

My config :

Forward/Backward/Strafe L or R : WASD (ZQSD in fact as french have an AZERTY keyboard)
Use : E
Fire : mouse 1
Strafe : mouse 2 (for strafe50)

To avoid fireballs in a small corridor, stay sticked to one of the walls, and then stick on the other when the monster has fired.

To kill the spidermasterminds quickly, shot a bfg ball when you're very close (with vanilla behavior, shot another bfg ball before this action).

Cybers are useful to kill quickly hordes of monster, use them.

Another tactic is to make a monster moving between you and a chaingunner, then you can kill him quicly and keep ammos.

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I use

Right click: Move forward
Left click: Shoot
A,S,D like most keyboards (left/back/right [strafe])
E: Open
Space: Jump
Ctrl: Crouch

I use that in half life (deathmatch, or HL1 online) and I'm always among the top. It takes a while to get used to but it totally kicks 'w' as move forward.

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Okay, a few things...

If you are well under 100% health and you find a soulsphere, pick up any smaller health packs you find. Unlike the megasphere, the soulsphere will not set you to 200% but only add 100 to your health. This will maximize what the soulsphere does for you. I once picked up a soulsphere when I had only 1% health, and what did I get? 101% health. It sucks.

Don't underestimate the chaingun. It is easy to use the chaingun on smaller monsters a lot, but it is wise to reserve the shotgun for smaller fare, at least when in small numbers. Bullet ammo is fairly common but the chaingun will often use it up faster than you can find it, so use it only when you feel it's necessary.

On that subject, the rapid-fire weapons work excellently against most tougher monsters but only the plasma rifle is effective against hordes of creatures. The bullets individually are too weak.

Archviles are a pain in the ass and even the plasma rifle may not be fast enough to stop them in mid-attack. The super shotgun, however, is very effective when used at point-blank range and in fact you have a better chance of taking out an archvile close-range this way than at a distance with another weapon, which it may well be able to avoid.

Unlike the other former humans, chaingunners seriously don't fuck around. Shotgunners will lose their potency at long distance and can easily be felled with one shot; not so with chaingunners. If you find a large room full of them and don't have cover ready, you will die very fast. Don't be afraid to use your rocket launcher to stop them, as it will almost always be able to take them out in one shot.

Unless you're in a large room with lots of more dangerous things, it is advised that you use the chainsaw on demons and spectres. They can use up a decent amount of chaingun ammo but are more or less incapable of hurting you if you chainsaw them. Just be wary of doing this with hordes of them; there is a risk of you being surrounded and unable to respond quickly.

The only instance in which the chaingun is useful against large numbers of enemies is in the case of lost souls. Since they have a 100% pain chance, a single bullet will stop them in their tracks. With the chaingun, it isn't to hard to not only keep them all away from you but kill them one by one.

That's all I have so far...

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Black Metal said:
I use

Right click: Move forward
Left click: Shoot
A,S,D like most keyboards (left/back/right [strafe])
E: Open
Space: Jump
Ctrl: Crouch

I use that in half life (deathmatch, or HL1 online) and I'm always among the top. It takes a while to get used to but it totally kicks 'w' as move forward.

What do you have for alt-fire?

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Speaking of chaingun, it's useful against the arachnotrons, to prevent them to fire their plasma balls.

The chaingun can be useful to snipe also : just shot 2 bullets per 2 bullets.

On another note, if monsters are under you, try to shot on walls in front of you : even if they're very very lower than you the splash damage will kill them. *works only with the infinite tail actors*

Don't underestimate the power of the telefrag !

Oh, and use a lot barrels here and there, try chain combos like this : shot a barrel which project another barrel in a troup of monsters, still funny :-)

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When I play a new Doom 2 map, I have the chaingun readied, just so any emerging chaingunners or revenants won't murder me.

If I just know the territory, I'll stick to the boomsticks, as they have the advantage of being able to hit and run.

For panic situations, plasma gun wins. If I'm assaulted unexpectedly, I ready it so I survive. I hardly use it otherwise, because cells are rare.

Against smaller groups (preferably which are far away and easily controlled), I use the rocket launcher. Against hordes which come quickly on me, I switch to the BFG 9000.

If I know the ammo's sparse, I resort to the melee weapons (berserk which is for hit/run and chainsaw which is a bit safer). An example map is the KDiZD boss level, which, thanks to its room-hallway system, works fine for melee weapons.

I was able to kill D'Sparil from Heretic, from a savegame having completed former levels, by flying and toming my firemace (fortunately I had one), and succeeding in killing ALL of those disciples present there. Fortunately, after that, when D'Sparil was uncovered, I was able to defeat him.

So in Heretic, I'd suggest only using the firemace when it's tomed. It's much better as that.

Note that in Strife, the game suffers badly from 2.5d-ness. Even if sentinels (those rounded robots shooting stupid blasters) are high up, a minimissile with its known little blast radius will still severely damage them, because the blast volume is cylindrical, NOT spherical, as probably it is in ZDoom... You don't use ZDoom to play Strife do you.

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Maybe it's just me, but I think it would be interesting if someone created a new map/picked a random not-so-well-known map from the archives and then everyone interested recorded a demo of them playing the map. Would be more interesting to compare strategies in action.

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Creaphis said:

Hm, I've never made much use of wallrunning or the silent BFG trick. Most Doomers who'd be interested in playing oldschool deathmatches most likely know of those tricks already. (All my pvp experience has been newschool.)


Almost any "oldschool" player with true experience within the confines of normal doom gameplay will rape a "newschool" player.

So basically, if you want to get good at Doom (multiplayer I assume), seek out the best "oldschool" players and play them as much as you can. Expect to get beaten over and over but eventually you'll be able to at least put up a fight. Once this happens you should be able to beat almost any player on an engine like Skulltag.

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Jodwin said:

Maybe it's just me, but I think it would be interesting if someone created a new map/picked a random not-so-well-known map from the archives and then everyone interested recorded a demo of them playing the map. Would be more interesting to compare strategies in action.

Would be nice, but why not on a map done especially for the occasion ?

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That's what I think would be best. If we make a map specifically for this, then it will be easier to set up a whole range of instances to which the player could respond. There is a lot--low ammo, confined vs. open space, large vs. small numbers of all kinds of monsters--but somebody clever could make a nice map which covered most of these pretty well.

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Black Metal said:
Shift :P
Does DOOM have alt-fire O_o

No (outside of some Gzdoom wads) but Half-Life dose which you said you also used it for.

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StupidBunny said:

That's what I think would be best. If we make a map specifically for this, then it will be easier to set up a whole range of instances to which the player could respond. There is a lot--low ammo, confined vs. open space, large vs. small numbers of all kinds of monsters--but somebody clever could make a nice map which covered most of these pretty well.

I doubt Doom has strategy. It's quite straightforward, all that matters is experience (not much needed) and will to survive.

If we pick or make a random map and give it up to everyone to make demos of it, then what? We'll simply see the varying styles of play, really. Some like sniping and being covered (the safe types), others are so good that they run straight through it and don't die. Some use mouse, others use keyboard, others do both. That kind of thing, really...

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And it will be funny to watch, it's not really like a contest...

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Exactly, this is meant to be an analysis of gameplay styles rather than a competition. (I guess that's what I meant when I said "strategy...")

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I can't say that Doom has any better strategy than dodging the projectiles that are hurled at you by strafing left and right. However, I would like to mention that there is a certain order of monsters that need to be killed first, from most threatening monsters to least. This is my preferation.

1. Chaingun guys
2. Shotgun guys
3. Arch Viles
4. Pain Elementals
5. Revenants
6. Lost Souls
7. Icons of Sin.
8. Spider Masterminds
9. Arachnatrons
10. Mancubi
11. Demons/Spectres
12. Zombie Men
13. Imps
14. Cyberdemons
15. Cacodemons
16. Hell Knights
17. Hell Barons

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That's a good thing to analyze... here's mine.

1.Arch-viles
2.Spiderdemons
3.Chaingunners
4.Shotgunners
5.Pain Elementals
6.Revenants
7.Arachnotrons
8.Mancubi
9.Lost Souls
10.Demons/Specters
11.Imps
12.Cacodemons
13.Cybs
14.Pistol Zombies
15.Hell Knights
16.Hell Barons

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My order :

1.Arch-viles
2.Spiderdemons
3.Chaingunners
4.Pain Elementals
5.Revenants
6.Shotgunners
7.Arachnotrons
8.Mancubi
9.Lost Souls
10.Demons/Specters
11.Imps
12.Cacodemons
15.Hell Knights
16.Hell Barons
13.Cybs
14.Pistol Zombies

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