Cheapest Traps in the IWADS?

[Roofi]

Not really a cheap trap , but I always considered the last trap of E1M6 as a real difficulty spike in the episode and the game in general.

[Wagi]

10 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Final Doom Map30 intro bit isn't cheap or hard at all though, the start of the map literally tells you which colors to choose and in what order.. Mario games, which are notoriously not-that-hard, have puzzles that make this look like baby stuff! You don't need to write anything, just follow the order of the torches that you see in the starting hallway.

 

That's hindsight speaking. Puzzles in Mario don't instakill the player before they realize there's even a puzzle involved. I guarantee you that every single first-time player of that map ignored the torches and instantly bolted straight into an instant death teleporter.

[Ant1]

Another "trap" I hated was that room in Nirvana with a shit ton of imps and a pain elemental. I hated that a lot the first time I played Doom 2.

[drfrag]

23 minutes ago, Wagi said:

instantly bolted straight into an instant death teleporter

 So it was not trial and error lol. The other day playing online i died at least one hundred times until the other guy told me how to proceed.

[wheresthebeef]

On 8/1/2020 at 9:18 AM, Pirx said:

inescapable nukage pool at the start of e1m3

Possibly the first person to ever fall for this one

 

 

[TheLoneliness]

the one that comes to mind, is the plutonia level where there is a chaingunner right behind you, when you start.

[Starduster]

1 minute ago, TheLoneliness said:

the one that comes to mind, is the plutonia level where there is a chaingunner right behind you, when you start.

Map10, right? Onslaught?

[Poncho1]

That Arch-Vile in Aztec. Sure, you can negate a lot of damage by rubbing up against one of those square blocks, but it's still cheap.

[Pirx]

On 8/3/2020 at 4:54 PM, wheresthebeef said:

Possibly the first person to ever fall for this one

 

 

Ha! Talk about making a trap and falling into it. :p

[erzboesewicht]

For me, the already mentioned "The Factory" imp trap wins definitively.

MAP22 of Plutonia has an area where when you backtrack, chaingunners will shoot at you from behind fake walls. It's not that difficult, but really cheap :)

The same map has also a lift which will take you in the midst of chaingunners and Pain Elementals. However, I like this trap. With a reasonable reaction time you can carve a hole to hide and then deal with the rest of the gang.

And yeah, Plutonia25's teleport-in-the-face-of-revenants-with-zombies-behind-you trap is really evil.

In contrast I like the Go2it archviles, the Aztec traps and MAP15's warp-in hell when you try to escape from the invincible chaingunners. These in my opinion are good, challenging setpieces.

[j4rio]

On 8/3/2020 at 5:38 AM, Doomkid said:

Map11 and Map32 of Plutonia are two of the least cheap, imo. SSGing Arch-viles around corners is nothing, and BFGing giant walls of helpless meat when I have nearly infinite cells is not hard at all. Basically the rest of the megawad other than those maps can go on here imo!

 

To add to that, I don't even really think there is that much cheap stuff in plutonia overall. As mentioned, map 3 archviles and map 10 chaingunner right behind your back as you start may be the worst offenders. And they are not all that menacingly offending, to be fair. You could add map 2 crushers and instances with chainers being revived by hidden archviles as cheap too. Maybe the lack of armor in map 8 coupled with that chaingunner tower trap can be considered cheap difficulty. Also probably that map 25 start with sarges around starting location. Overall, that may be about everything I can think of. It may be a difficult wad for its time, but it didn't rely on dirty cheapness to achieve it.

[Doomkid]

On 8/4/2020 at 12:25 AM, Wagi said:

That's hindsight speaking. Puzzles in Mario don't instakill the player before they realize there's even a puzzle involved. I guarantee you that every single first-time player of that map ignored the torches and instantly bolted straight into an instant death teleporter.

Sure, the very first time, but if you save at the start of map30 which any decent player back in the day was in the habit of, it really doesn't take long or more than about 2-3 deaths to figure out. You try it a couple times, die, then suddenly realize the torches pertain to the order you have to take them in. It can't be hindsight really because I figured it out my first time playing through TNT in 2001-2002ish

[seed]

The Soul Bridge in Plutonia.

 

The player will simply have no idea what to do when they go there for the first time.

[Wagi]

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

Sure, the very first time, but if you save at the start of map30 which any decent player back in the day was in the habit of, it really doesn't take long or more than about 2-3 deaths to figure out. You try it a couple times, die, then suddenly realize the torches pertain to the order you have to take them in. It can't be hindsight really because I figured it out my first time playing through TNT in 2001-2002ish

Sure, but by that definition there's no such thing as a cheap trap at all, since if something kills you out of nowhere, you can simply reload your save.

 

If you figured it out after dying a couple of times, that is hindsight by definition.

[Lila Feuer]

On 8/1/2020 at 1:03 PM, Marn said:

The red key trap in Aztec is pretty stupid

Agreed, it's the only part of Plutonia guaranteed to kill or severely injure me no matter what I do. There are later encounters in this IWAD that aren't this evil.

E: Holy crap yeah the imp trap with the soulsphere in The Factory is really fucking stupid. I just go in through the door now after years of suffering, and eventually the floor raises up so I can just gun them down safely and then go back and get it.

[Maximum Matt]

2 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

eventually the floor raises up so I can just gun them down safely and then go back and get it.

Really?! The five-minute timer thing?

[idbeholdME]

On 8/3/2020 at 5:38 AM, Doomkid said:

I honestly had no idea teleport lines were visible in more modern ports..

They can if you choose to use a custom map with custom colors. But you always have the option of going vanilla.

 

As for my experience of TNT map 30, I always just brute forced it. Never realized there was a point to the torches at the start. I think I probably wouldn't have realized it to this day if I hadn't read about the map on the wiki at some point.

[RichardDS90]

The final part of Tricks and Traps. It's no issue for me these days, but damn, does it feel a little TOO cruel.

[Vorknkx]

My pick would be Doom 2 MAP21 - the yellow skull room. You know the one.

 

Since someone mentioned Plutonia MAP11 - there are actually grey (metal) lines on the walls that denote where a door-opening linedef is. So it's not just wild guessing.

[Optimus]

Lot's of good picks on here (with my favorite, the teleport to imp room on MAP12. If you teleport there, sometimes even attacking back with the chainsaw or berserk and they can still be faster and scratch you to death).

 

One more, in E2M6, there is this corridor reaching a place with 4 doors in a 8 corridor pattern. This is where the fake secret exits exist too. But that's not the most assholish part.

The most assholish part is you open one of the doors to enter the room, left and right lost souls, forward a trap opens, and my natural instinct was to backtrack and exit the room. But when these things happen, the door has closed in my back while a slow crasher has started. If you instinctively backtrack by observing the monsters coming and the tight spaces there, you end up hitting use on the door that does nothing (it really opens with another switch in the room) while the slow crusher suddenly catches you and you can't escape. You could still die if you realized it early and tried to run away from the door, but now the trap monsters have come too close and block your way. I can't remember but I think this is a Sandy Petersen map? I would believe it if you tell me it was :P

 

 

 

 

p.s. To be honest, the teleport trap to the crusher room in The Marshes PS1 level is the worst so far. You can't even escape or know that. And PS1 doesn't have frequent saves. I had to memorise which teleport is the one to avoid because there are many.

 

[Optimus]

On 8/5/2020 at 8:32 PM, Maximum Matt said:

Really?! The five-minute timer thing?

 

I tried this, to wait over 5 minutes and the floor didn't rise up.

Looking at this with Doombuilder, there is a second switch down that floor falling trap with the shotgunners and the teleport to outside. Behind a wall near the teleporter there is a switch I always pressed but never knew what it really did, yet thought it was important to press for further level progression. Now I know..

[Maximum Matt]

[PasokonDeacon]

On 8/5/2020 at 10:54 AM, seed said:

The Soul Bridge in Plutonia.

 

The player will simply have no idea what to do when they go there for the first time.

It's a bit baffling how well Dario managed to front-load that whole part of Well of Souls without effectively telegraphing the existence of an invisible bridge to players. Little else in Plutonia feels as unfair; at least you can figure out the other brutal traps within a second or two, or run from them if you can't. I hate to rag on the map, but Well of Souls is hurt so much by this section until you know what's going on.

[vanilla_d00m]

- Any slime pit or pits that deal damage to you untill you die with no way of escaping. 

 

- Monster tele fragging you because you stayed on the teleporter too long. 

 

- Ambushed by monsters when you finally find the key you been trying to find for soo long.

 

- My favorite one (because im still a noob) is when I accidently save state a game when I die, so everytime my gzdoom port loads (it auto loads my last save) it shows me the part where I die on my save.  Over and over again.. i stopped doing IDDQD when this happens because thats cheating.