The Hardest Wad?

[Foodles]

So... the search function (for me at least) seems to be broken so I'll ask this question again (I'm sure it's been asked before).

What is the hardest wad out there?

So far I've gleaned that Dimensions is pretty hard, do you know anything tougher than that?

[Nine Inch Heels]

8 minutes ago, Foodles said:

So far I've gleaned that Dimensions is pretty hard, do you know anything tougher than that?

Dimensions on UV is "extremely hard but still humanly possible with lots of effort and practice", anything past that would be extremely luck based, if not "TAS only".

 

I guess there's "untitled2" aka "okuplok map" or whatever people call it, which is one huge map that is extremely hard by virtue of length and due to being stingy with health.

 

I am not aware that there's anything harder than that - and still qualifies as playable... At least not in the realms of "player versus monsters"... I guess Masterjumps9y is pretty hard. RJSLOTH map 10 is also tough... but those maps are ZDaemon rocket jump maps, which is an entirely different "school of design".

[Roofi]

New Sunder maps

[Foodles]

I realise there's probably a lot of maps out there that aren't really playable but would qualify as hard. So take this as a criteria: Take each map as if you were locked in a room and told you couldn't come out until you beat it with no saves, from pistol start. What's the hardest map you could beat?

[Nine Inch Heels]

The hardest map that I think I might be able to do (and actually planned on doing about a year ago or something like that) is this one:

 

[BigBoy91]

Feckyoo is pretty ridiculous.

 

[Poncho1]

Dimensions, Chillax, Okuplok Slaughter and RJSLOTH are some of the hardest, I'd wager.

 

Added tidbit: mappers known for insane difficulty include TimeOfDeath, Mr. Zzul (or Killer5), Ribbiks, dannebubinga and... Phml? Is that their name?

[Poncho1]

Ah yes, here's a handy chart (some of these I personally disagree with, but overall it's a good difficulty indicator):

 

[xvertigox]

I spent a bit of time listing a few noteworthy wads in terms of difficulty so have a look there if you want some ruthless shit. Like NIH mentioned earlier Dimensions tops that list.
 

 

[BigBoy91]

6 minutes ago, xvertigox said:

I spent a bit of time listing a few noteworthy wads in terms of difficulty so have a look there if you want some ruthless shit. Like NIH mentioned earlier Dimensions tops that list.
 

 

Hell yeah. Been working my way through this list.

[pcorf]

Crusades by Richard Wiles is probably the hardest non-slaughterwad. Maybe even harder than SIGIL.

[Lila Feuer]

It's been nearly a decade or so since I last played Hell Revealed II but I remember the first 11 or so maps being unusually nasty with Hell Knights and just general dickish hot starts with an enemy right behind you. I thought they were actually more difficult than two-thirds that comprised of the meat of the PWAD.

[Endless]

3 hours ago, Poncho1 said:

Ah yes, here's a handy chart (some of these I personally disagree with, but overall it's a good difficulty indicator):

 

Hahaha love it.

[dmslr]

This thread is all you need.

 

[franckFRAG]

Italo-Doom by Danne and Ribbiks :

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/italo

[Nine Inch Heels]

On 4/6/2020 at 10:30 PM, Poncho1 said:

Dimensions, Chillax, Okuplok Slaughter and RJSLOTH are some of the hardest, I'd wager.

 

Added tidbit: mappers known for insane difficulty include TimeOfDeath, Mr. Zzul (or Killer5), Ribbiks, dannebubinga and... Phml? Is that their name?

 

Okay, I think there's perhaps a few things to explain about these mappers and their maps.

 

Starting with Dimensions: Map 01 is relatively easy freewheeling slaughter, and unless you're trying to beat the map in less than 10 or even 9 minutes it is fairly manageable. Map 02 has 2 fights that are insanely lethal, both of which require a bit of luck to survive because of how it doesn't really matter how much health you have sometimes there. Map 03 is the largest of main courses, it has less hyper-lethal individual fights than map 02, but it also has more fights than map 02. Then there are the bonus maps in slot 31 and 32 -of which 31 is the easier and much shorter map. So overall the difficulty and length varies a good amount. If you can't do either map 01 or map 31, don't even think about being able to beat the other maps, is basically how this one goes, IMO.

 

Chillax isn't really meant to be played solo in the first place. Some maps are in what I'd call "barely doable in single player" territory. The situation changes if you play for example with item-respawn, at which point you will at least have enough ammo to deal with most of baddies, never mind the occasional health re-fill. If you wanna play chillax solo for the exercise: Play with item-respawn, and perhaps consider ITYTD for 50% less damage received.

 

Okuplok is a mixed bag. Some fights are quite lethal, others are just grind. Unlike chillax the map is built for single player, and if it weren't for the insane size of the map I'm sure somebody would have UVmaxed it already. The fact that nobody has doesn't say much about how hard the map is on average, so far nobody wanted to grind the map due to how much of a time sink it is. If you split okuplok up into for example 4-5 individual maps then there would be demos for all of them, I'd guess.

 

As for RJSLOTH, the only map that really matters is in slot 10 of the WAD. It's ToD's re-vamped version of the original, or rather "roided version", to be more exact. The map takes not only a fairly high degree of skill to beat, it is also quite a lengthy one (Takes even more time to beat than some of the RJspace iterations). There are rocket jump maps with harder jumps, but most of those maps are easier due to being much shorter overall. The old RJSLOTH can be beaten by just about anybody with enough "stamina", while the new one is on a different plane of difficulty. That being said, RJSLOTH 10 is ToD's hardest overall map as far as I'm concerned. His slaughter maps are usually easier to beat, and I wouldn't rate ToD's slaughter maps as very hard by virtue of "immediate difficulty", since ToD's "design-doctrine" usually favours consistency over extremely high difficulty. You might not beat his maps easily due to how they check for consistency, but most of the stuff ToD throws at you is typically easy enough to understand, and repeat successfully with a bit of practice. Think of it like playing an instrument: While some maps like for example from dimensions require you to play an insanely hard solo once, ToD's maps require you to play a much less difficult solo, but multiple times as clean as possible.

 

 

The reason I don't bring up the new sunder maps is that they're not final yet, and some of them are still being tweaked quite a bit. So before I'd make an attempt to rate their difficulty I'd rather wait until the maps are deemed "definitive". My first impression of them is that most of these are difficult by virtue of length primarily, for that matter.

 

 

As for the mappers you mentioned: Zzul's and ribbiks' maps are the ones I'd rank as the highest in terms of difficulty (especially the top-end), closely followed by some of danne's and ToD's more difficult stuff (Though I'd still argue RJSLOTH is harder than most stuff ribbiks has made, so it is an outlier). phml's maps vary a bit in difficulty, but in my experience they're typically on the easier side of slaughter when compared to the other mappers you listed anyway. There are also maps made by Benjogami which I'd put on a similar plane of difficulty as for example ribbiks' maps. Likewise, entropy by Nirvana is also a pretty tough one due to being a somewhat big map, an then there are some maps made by Bemused (cryogenics) which I'd put into the "pretty tough" category, while other maps of his would be better put into a similar line of difficulty that many of ToD's maps belong in. rdwpa has also made some fairly challenging stuff, for example "ovum"... Yeah, anyway... there's lots of difficult stuff out there, but when it comes to "most difficult without being complete bullshit" I'd put my money on dimensions as far as the difficulty of individual fights is considered, anyway.

Edited April 10, 2020 by Nine Inch Heels

[Andromeda]

On 4/7/2020 at 10:05 AM, Nine Inch Heels said:

Okuplok is a mixed bag. Some fights are quite lethal, others are just grind. Unlike chillax the map is built for single player, and if it weren't for the insane size of the map I'm sure somebody would have UVmaxed it already. The fact that nobody has doesn't say much about how hard the map is on average, so far nobody wanted to grind the map due to how much of a time sink it is. If you split okuplok up into for example 4-5 individual maps then there would be demos for all of them, I'd guess.

I have a feeling that if the revenant room was placed near the start it'd be more appealing to max. The rest of the encounters should be manageable with a good strategy for a skilled maxer, though that room is a bit unfair considering it takes more than two hours to get there.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Andromeda

[3saster]

1 hour ago, Andromeda said:

I have a feeling that if the revenant room was placed near the start it'd be more appealing to max. The rest of the encounters should be manageable with a good strategy for a skilled maxer, though that room is a bit unfair considering it takes more than two hours to get there.

I'd be curious to see a demo of that room just by itself actually. That room is absurd, and I'm not entirely sure that room can actually be done by a human (at least, I'd like to see it). Even ignoring that one room, there are a number of fights in the wad that are rough and very tough to do (like the HK/Archvile/Caco room), and also easy to screw up. At the very least, the ending section of the map is relatively easy.