Difference between revisions of "Strategy:The Mortuary"

Revision as of 10:27, 7 January 2025

Don't attempt storming it unless you have serious firepower and nuclear plasma rifle (or some other infinite-ammo weapon).

If you have Napalm launcher, you will have MUCH easier time hear, because each shot effectively kills all enemies at blast radius, leaving no corpses and creating area impassable to viles and most enemies.

Entering level with Berserk, Invincibility and/or goggless help a lot. Health level matter less, because there are super-health globes near entrance.

If you don't feel prepared good enough, but have homing phase device, and is not aiming for YAAM, it can be worth visiting just to grab some goodies (modules, Nuclear BFG, Assault shotgun) and leave expeditiously.

Basically, there are two parts of the fight.

First, kill as much Viles as soon as possible, while moving to Nuclear BFG 9000 in top right corner.

If you are lucky, you will kill ALL of viles this way, saving you a lot of trouble and resources.

Otherwise, you will be at one side of the room, with a horde of risen dead advancing you from another. So, start killing them from maximum distance, giving preference to infinite-ammo weapons, and firing with nuclear bfg or other explosive weapon to clean up corpses. You can see corpses even out of you range, so you can see when they disappear - it means they are rised and vile is somewhere around.

If you play above HNTR, it can be good idea to demolish central structure, so enemy will not use it for suprising you. Also, if you don't take/destroy read armor, enemies will take it instead.

It is not impossible (and very badass) to clear out mortuary with melee, especially as Vampire. You will need good dodge rate and speed, so at least HR2 is a must. Also, any non-indestructible armor you where will most likely be shredded very fast. IT is much more problematic on HMP and above, because of Commandos.

Slightly less badass option is to hole up in corner or central structure and kill breakaway monsters one by one. Works both with melee and ranged. Corner rooms have worse cover, but in the central room you can be attacked from more sides. Tylor (talk) 23:13, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The most important part of handling Mortuary is your opening; a proper Mortuary opening will be the difference between fighting a few dozenish enemies, or having to fight hundreds of them. You cannot lollygag around, as Archviles activate very quickly due to their 160% speed and will immediately start resurrecting enemies even quicker. Your immediate priority upon entering Mortuary shouldn't be trying to kill all the Archviles before they resurrect enemies (which isn't feasible unless you get very lucky with them all spawning right near you at the start), but rather trying to mass destroy as many corpses as you can before the Archviles get a chance to revive them. There are these particular items you want to bring to The Mortuary with you to do this:

• Skulls, of which you are guaranteed at least three if you kill the Agony elemental prior in City of Skulls or Abyssal Plains, but you can find them as random item spawns throughout the game with some luck.

• A BFG 9000, of which are you can find guaranteed prior in Halls of Carnage or Spider's Lair, but can also find it as a random spawn if you're very lucky.

• A Power battery, of which you can find one guaranteed in Spider's Lair and House of Pain, but can also find them randomly throughout the game with a bit of luck.

• A Rocket launcher, preferably a Tactical rocket launcher, but the vanilla Rocket Launcher or even a Micro launcher can do. This is mainly for rocket jumping, so this does not include any other sort of rocket launcher that cannot rocket jump, such as the Missile launcher.

Skulls are Exotic items that destroy all corpses in a 8-tile radius around you while granting an additional effect. Of these Skulls, Hatred skulls are by far the most useful, as each corpse it gibs will give you 5 additional actions of berserk, resulting in you getting a huge amount of berserk to work with, which will speed you up significantly to destroy more corpses before the Archviles can revive them, as well as give you a big defensive buff so you don't need to worry about the damage you take from Archviles and other enemies as you focus on destroying the corpses, and doubled melee damage is obviously helpful for quickly whacking Archviles in the way if you invested at all into melee. If the Agony Elemental didn't drop any Hatred Skulls and you found none randomly, the next best Skull to bring in is the Fire skull, which will generate a 3-tile radius 7d7 explosion on each corpse in an 8-tile radius around you, while said explosions do not harm you. Due to the explosions, it can gib extra corpses a few tiles outside its gibbing radius, while dealing severe damage to any Archviles caught in the explosions, possibly even instantly killing them if you're lucky. The least useful Skull is a Blood skull, which in addition to gibbing every corpse in the same 8 tile radius, will heal you for 5 HP per gibbed corpse, up to a maximum of 200% health. Since there are two Supercharges immediately adjacent to you as you enter the level, you don't need the health recovery and would much rather have the berserk from a Hatred Skull or get the extra corpse and possible Archvile destruction with a Fire Skull, but if you were unlucky enough for the Agony Elemental to drop only Blood Skulls, it is still much better than nothing. For the amount of Skulls to bring with you, a good opening only requires one, especially if it's a Hatred Skull, but if you want the extra assurance and don't mind sacrificing the inventory space carrying it for a while, you can bring a second or even a third with you, particularly if you were lucky enough to get more than one Hatred Skull, or if you're playing Nightmare! or Angel of Darkness, where you'll need all the corpse disposal you can manage with the perpetually reviving enemies.

As for the BFG, the 8-radius explosions it unleashes will destroy all corpses caught within its radius, allowing you to destroy much more corpses in a timely manner than you would be able to manage with any other weapon, while preparing a Power Battery before you enter Mortuary will allow you to quickly reload three more shots with it. And finally, being able to rocket jump is super important, as it's by far the fastest way to move around, while also having the big benefit of effectively extending the duration of any berserk or invulnerability you have, as it lets you move many tiles at once in one action, when moving normally would waste many actions of these powerups otherwise.

With that all explained, here is how my usual Mortuary opening goes.

• Immediately upon entering, I'll pop the Skull I brought with me. If it's a Fire Skull and I want the Supercharge or Red Armors, I may try to quickly pick them up before using it, as the Fire Skull's explosions will destroy all items caught within. If I want them but I'm not using a Fire Skull, I'll grab them after using the Skull.

• After popping the Skull, I'll rocket jump to around the middle of the eastern area (if you don't want to destroy the Supercharges, you'll have to move a bit out of the central building before rocket jumping, though this does cost precious time). Then I equip the BFG 9000 and shoot two blasts to the upper right and lower right, aiming to try covering as much corpses as possible (while avoiding to shoot too far into the upper or bottom right, so as to not destroy all the good items in the corners, especially the Nuclear BFG 9000). Note the BFG's projectile explodes exactly on the targeted tile (unless an enemy or other obstacle is in the way), and as of 0.9.9.8, you cannot target a tile outside your vision with it, so keep that in mind when deciding how far to rocket jump in and when selecting which tile you're firing at with the BFG.

• Get whatever rocket launcher I have back out and now quickly rocket jump to around the middle of the western area, ignoring any Archviles and enemies in the way (though there may be some you need to move around). With the Power Battery equip, you can quickly reload your BFG for another two shots, and then repeat the step before of shooting two BFG blasts to the upper and bottom left, aiming for spots that maximize the amount of corpses destroyed while avoiding destroying the items in the corners.

With this simple opening, the majority of corpses will be gone before the Archviles can even get a chance to revive them, significantly limiting the amount of possible enemies you'll have to fight. For what to do from this point, I like to rocket jump back to the eastern area and secure the Nuclear BFG, as it's prone to getting destroyed and is just very handy to have otherwise (be especially careful to not let any Barons or Mancubi fire towards the upper right, as they'll almost assuredly destroy it if one of their projectiles explodes in that area), while killing any Archviles along the way. Alternatively, after step 2, you may want to go and grab the Nuclear BFG before going to the western area, to secure it sooner and limit the chances of it getting destroyed, though this will cost a good chunk of time that could result in the Archviles resurrecting many of the western corpses before you get to them. One more alteration to this strategy is to fire three BFG shots towards each side instead if you have the cells to spare for it (or were lucky enough to find a second random BFG in addition to the guaranteed one), which if you do, you'll ideally want to rocket jump deeper into each side after the initial two shots in the middle, so you can aim for a nice pile of corpses in the middle of the far sides (while again trying to avoid blowing up the items in the corners).

If you're playing any of the weapon-locked challenges; Angel of Berserk, Angel of Marksmanship, or Angel of Shotgunnery; and thus are unable to use the BFG nor a rocket launcher to rocket jump around, this strategy will be significantly limited but it remains important. In these challenges, you'll want to bring a second or even a third Skull with you if you plan on doing Mortuary/Limbo, and while your initial first action will be the same of immediately popping a Skull (still preferably the Hatred Skull), the strategy will deviate by you instead making a mad dash towards one of the sides, and then trying to pop a second Skull in the middle of a big visible corpse pile. You won't really have time to run all the way to the other side to gib the corpses there with a third Skull (unless no Archviles spawned on that side, in which case there is no real point to going over there to gib corpses anyway), and so should just immediately proceed to fighting from that point (while securing the Nuclear BFG ASAP if you care about getting a full win and don't already have a Thermonuclear bomb). Alternatively after popping the first Skull, if you have any Phase devices, you could try gambling with them to immediately drop you into a nice corpse pile to use additional Skulls on before Archviles can get to them, especially if you're a Technician (whose near-instant item use could allow them to phase around and get multiple Skulls off before any of the Archviles even wake up). However, you may just want to settle with popping only the first Skull before proceeding to try going after the Archviles, especially if you're not playing a build with especially fast movement speed and so can't even get to the middle of either side before the Archviles revive too many enemies to be worth it.

For one more alternative opener that can work in any challenge, if you have Azrael's Scythe, you can use its alt-fire, Whisper Of Death, to quickly kill all the Archviles. As long as you brought at least one medkit with you, upon entering Mortuary, you can immediately use Whisper Of Death four times to kill all the Archviles within a few seconds of the level starting, using the two Supercharges you spawn near and a medkit to restore your tactics inbetween usages. This is the strongest possible opener, and doing it will leave you with only a scant handful of weakened enemies to trivially mop up after, but using Whisper Of Death four times comes with the hefty cost of permanently reducing your max HP by 20 for the remainder of your run, so this is a strategy you'll only want to resort to if you think your build and/or equipment isn't good enough to handle Mortuary conventionally. It is also much less effective on Nightmare and Angel Of Darkness, as the corpses will still be resurrecting themselves even after killing all the Archviles. Omega Tyrant (talk) 10:27, 7 January 2025 (UTC)