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40oz

Pain Elemental / Lost Soul Usage

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This is kind of a duplicate of the chaingun guy topic but these are typically hated monsters, but I've grown to love them a lot.

Pain Elemental usage is very sensitive, meaning that it is kinda difficult to use them in a situation that doesn't suck. You can't just stick them in a hallway like a regular imp. They need to be used in wide open arena-styled areas, and should only see the player when the player is actually in the arena (not from the doorway entrance)

The wide open area keeps the pain elementals from killspawning lost souls into walls and other monsters. It also keeps them from fogging up hallways with lost souls and making it cumbersome for the player to move.

Some of the best usage of pain elementals are in the form of trap closets of teleport ambushes, so that they catch while you are already in a room instead of catching you at the point of entry. One of the best examples I can think of is in the map "Spawned Fear" in Doom 64, there's a switch in a square room that causes pain elementals to swarm in through a hole in the ceiling at the center of the room. Another similar example can be found in the room after the yellow key door in exfistpe.wad. Providing the player with some extra medikits or body armor in these situations is helpful too.

Lost souls need wide open areas to maneuver and best cope in areas that don't have too much height variation. They easily collide into steps on a staircase, or random light fixtures in the ceiling. They need a lot of breathing room in order to be used to their best ability where their faulty behavior is least exposed. I tend to like to use them when they are perched at a thin elevated ledge or some platform, so that they are airborne when they close in on the player, and swoop down to bite.

It's also best to avoid too much items placed in a room with lost souls unless they are stowed away in indents on the walls or in far corners. I may be wrong, but in my experiences, lost souls tend to collide with item pickups which interrupt their attacks.

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40oz said:

It's also best to avoid too much items placed in a room with lost souls unless they are stowed away in indents on the walls or in far corners. I may be wrong, but in my experiences, lost souls tend to collide with item pickups which interrupt their attacks.

Yeah, that's a Doom bug that's not even fixed in ZDoom as far as I know. Very easy to reproduce in e2m8.


I find killing Pain Elementals with rocket launchers satisfying because it's very effective as long as you keep strafing properly but at the same time risky, though other players may not for obvious reasons. You could include a rocket launcher on UV and a plasma rifle on HMP for an interesting twist in difficulty.

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Hey good call, I often forget that all things can be varied by difficulty and not just monsters. I like to use rocket launcher too sometimes, but yeah the little interval in between rockets is just enough to put a lost soul in your face sometimes.

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Just when I thought I'd post the fact that these are more annoying than chaingunners, I notice this thread.

But tbh, nothing's more annoying than (even armed with a BFG) a monster teleport location in a room, a bunch of hell knights, barons, even a cyberdemon or 2, a crapload of other monsters, and to top it off a couple archviles.

Forget about that room, or make it so they spawn when you're not in that room and get ready for agonizing fights.

When they're not "flaming" you, they're busy reviving the mess you've created.

By far the most irritating monster you can "abuse" in your maps.

Even though a pain elemental is quite painful too.
I like to deal with them with the SSG and a point black shot or 2 will kill them most of the time.
Rarely do I use a RL to kill them, too risky.
I've killed myself or nearly so by shooting rockets at pain elementals :p.

edit: lost souls not so much, but most of the time I tend to "rush" through maps.
When I encounter a room filled with lost souls or pain elementals the first thing I do is take a couple steps back and go back out of the room. I *hate* it when they basically just rape you when there are a bunch of them, but they tend to invoke infighting most of the time, so that's a surplus.

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40oz said:

Lost souls [...] best cope in areas that don't have too much height variation.

I tend to disagree. Lost souls can slide up stairs, they don't stop. Also, if the engine doesn't allow z-clipping, and if it's Ultimate/Final Doom, Lost souls attacking you from above a risen rock are quite scary (unexpected).

Lost souls are some of my favorite monsters to place when I want something of moderate challenge against an unarmored player, especially if all he's got is a (super-)shotgun. They work in cramped spaces, and can fit in lots of holes, kinda like the Doom 3 trites.

Pain elementals are 100x more dangerous if you disable the 21 lost soul limit.

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Sonikku7 said:

I just like to use the chaingun on PEs. Makes them practically harmless.


Or stop in front of their mouth and run around them in a tight orbit making all the lost souls the demon spits out pop.

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I just had an interesting (totally stupid) idea for a concept map but I think it may work (only with vanilla doom though).
It probably has already been done anyway but here it is:

Put a Pain Elemental at the start of the map.
Put 20 lost souls somewhere in the map out of the way (these prevent the pain elemental from attacking).
Some story or explanation on a sign in the map may be handy so the player knows what to do.

The idea is that the player has to let the pain elemental live.
Maybe even protect it as he navigates the level.
It will follow the player wherever he goes.

Then at a certain point the player has to push the pain elemental into some tunnel (inaccessible to the player).
Then the player guides the pain elemental down the tunnel using his position to some locked door at the other end.
The pain elemental then opens the door from the other side.

Then after that a crusher perhaps could crush the 20 lost souls which would allow the pain elemental to attack again.

Maybe this would work as a super secret area :)

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That would be a bitch of a map. Maybe have the Pain Elemental walk over a monster only teleport then guide it to the door instead of attempting to get it in a cave.

It would be extremely weird to have a pet Pain Elemental?!?!?

Wouldn't be easy to protect the bastard because it tends to be in the way of every projectile, and it floats all over the place.

Although the idea is eccentric and I'd probably try a small map with that type of puzzle.

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4mer said:

I just had an interesting (totally stupid) idea for a concept map but I think it may work (only with vanilla doom though).
It probably has already been done anyway but here it is:
Put a Pain Elemental at the start of the map.
Put 20 lost souls somewhere in the map out of the way (these prevent the pain elemental from attacking).

The limit is 21 in fact (as printz mentioned earlier). If you include 20 lost souls, then the PEs can spit out one before hitting the limit.

The map that springs to mind is Hell Revealed map19, where the lost souls get crushed when you pick up a megasphere at the start of the map, and the PEs that had been wandering harmlessly around suddenly start producing lost souls. You can elect not to pick up the megasphere. It's done mostly as a little surprise for the player though, rather than any grandiose concept.

BTW, most ports support the lost-soul limit, and very few unconditionally eliminate it.

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Grazza, that hr idea sounds pretty cool.

4mer, I like that idea too. Maybe another idea could be, when you guide the pe somewhere, you press a switch or something to crush the lost souls so the pe can attack you, and you have to get the pe to shoot a lost soul into a hole in the wall that has a WR Lift lower wait raise line in it (88 I think, the slower speed) that the lost soul triggers when he gets shot into the hole (player can't get in the hole), then a lift lowers or the door lowers or something.

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